


She Takes You With Red Hands

by Magpythe



Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pandora - Freeform, Temporary Character Death, They got the myth wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpythe/pseuds/Magpythe
Summary: Saguru hadn't been called to the scene, he'd been called by Aoko.
Relationships: Hakuba Saguru/Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	She Takes You With Red Hands

Kaito watched from his kitchen, the lights in his neighbor's house slowly winking out. The dishes were done, there was only waiting for Aoko to go to sleep left.

His own lights had been out for a couple hours. Tonight was the first full moon since the last heist. It was kind of nice, sitting in the dark, looking up at the moon. Chances were it was another dud, but he couldn't have Aoko or her dad looking in and getting a glimpse of the stone in his hands.

When the other house went dark, he picked the diamond up off the counter, lifted it up to the moon.

Nothing.

Kaito sighed, then blinked. His head was swimming. He felt...dizzy.

A pain flared in his head, his heartbeat loud in his ears--something was behind it--it sounded like a whisper.

He stood, dropping the stone, clutching at his head. No, no what was this? This was nothing like what the legend had said--had he been shot?

Kaito's vision swam. He wiped at his eyes, hands coming back warm and wet, and when his focus bled back in, he saw they were dark with something that was smelling suspiciously like blood. He was hyperventilating. He needed to call an ambulance--or--

Kaito collapsed to his knees, watched his hands tremble, watched the growing deep red stain spread over his shirt, down his pants into the floor. More of it dripped from his face, spattering onto the wood floor under him.

He planted his hands on the floor, pushed himself up. Stumbling over his feet, head swimming, he started toward where he'd left his phone. The couch...he just needed to make it to the couch..he could call--someone, anyone, an ambulance, Saguru… Aoko… His mom...

The world faded away, staring up from the floor to the only thing that would let him communicate. No...

\---

Saguru hadn't been called to the scene, he'd been called by Aoko. 

Aoko hadn't been coherent on the other end. All he knew was that something had happened to Kaito, or something had happened at his house, at least. 

Even if she had been able to communicate, nothing could have prepared him for the scene. Nothing.

They hadn't moved Kaito by the time he'd gotten there. Saguru had pushed past the door to a clear view of empty eyes staring up from the floor, a long line of blood that started from behind the kitchen counter, and the front of Kaito's face smattered red. 

He'd promptly lost the contents of his stomach on the genkan.

The officers had coerced him outside, put a jacket over him, made a call he couldn't hear, but he stood up again and walked back in.

He had to know. He was not leaving until he knew.

His mind tuned out the officers and their words, tuned out most of the wave of emotions. Most. He analysed.

Kaito had been standing in his kitchen, facing the window. The blood trail started here, and was thin: Kaito hadn't been bleeding long yet, and had moved quickly. Small flecks of blood had fallen at such an angle as to suggest this. He'd hit the corner of his counter on the way out and collapsed onto the floor, bloody handprints clearly visible at the first large pool of his blood. 

Saguru felt his stomach churn again, pushed down the sensation, and continued.

Kaito had probably pushed himself off the floor here. Had he been trying to run from someone? There were partial footprints leading out from that. Kaito had managed three steps before collapsing again. From there it was clear he had crawled, red smears sending an all too perfect mental image to Saguru. Kaito had crawled five more feet, then stopped, where his body still lay, and died.

Exsanguination. It was obviously the cause of death. No one needed to say anything to him. There were at least seven pints spilled out on Kaito's floor. Whether it was laced with any other sorts of things would be useful information, but not the cause of death.

There was no sign of forced entry. Aoko hadn't noticed anything was wrong until this morning, none of the other neighbors reported hearing any loud sounds last night, and Kaito had died, bleeding out, dragging himself across his living room floor on his stomach between 1:05 and 1:30, in the dead of night. No one had known. No, someone did. Someone, somehow, had done this to Kaito.

Kaito's front had been soaked through with blood. It started half-way down his face and travelled down, stopping at around his shins. There were no lacerations. No punctures. He'd even looked under the eyelids. Despite this, Kaito had bled out.

The police finally caught up with him, two sets of strong arms hauling him away from Kaito, away from the living room, out the door. He was placed in the back of an ambulance, wanted to scream at the officers, at the ambulance workers to take Kaito here instead, but he knew better. He knew the truth. The words died in his throat, and he sat, silent, watching someone's hands tremble against his lap. They were probably his own, he noted. Probably.

\---

He'd been with Aoko when the heist notice arrived. If he hadn't been, he might never have gotten the news, but Keibu lived here, and he still had a job, even if he hadn't been able to go in the last few days. Saguru was hardly the only one suffering, but that notice...

It struck a chord.

Aoko had a look on her face he'd never seen before, and he could feel the same thing mirrored in his own.

That night at his own house, he dug through Kaito's file for the thirty-eighth time. His father's database gave him access to things he was otherwise barred from knowing, since no one wanted to involve him. He was too invested. He didn't give a damn about that, only one thing was important right now.

A cold anger, some fear, washed over him.

Kaito's body was reported missing from the morgue.

\---

The heist was one month from Kaito's death. Four weeks, six hundred and seventy hours, give or take eighteen-hundred seconds.

Kid did what Saguru didn't really expect at that moment.

He arrived.

The lights went out. A familiar laugh echoed through the room like a knife, twisting, and then, he'd sprung through, seizing the gem and running.

Saguru did not let him get away.

Whoever was doing this was going to talk to him.

The similarities between this fake and Kaito were disturbing, to say the least. But the worst part was catching up to them.

It took forty-seven minutes.

Saguru was physically exhausted, mentally raw, and emotionally charged past the point of breaking, and the person pinned under him was wearing Kaito's face, and that face was wearing an emotion that made Saguru want to rip this false facade off of them, throw it over the edge of the roof, and scream.

He tried. The face was firmly attached.

"Saguru..." Kaito's voice, his name. Saguru felt a tremor--anger--run through him.

A white gloved hand moved to his cheek.

"Saguru, you can let me go."

"No." His answer was immediate; one gloved hand forcing another to the ground. "No, that isn't happening. You aren't going..." Saguru leaned in, wrath in his eyes. The hands clasped around the doppelganger's wrists tightening. " _ Anywhere. _ "

Familiar eyes looked back up at him, still too distant. Everything was distant about this Kid. It looked so much like what he'd seen on Kaito's floor a month ago.

"What do you think you're  _ doing _ ," Saguru hissed out, voice venom. "Who the  _ fuck _ do you think you even  _ are _ ? You don't deserve that face. No one does, not anymore. It isn't yours." 

The blue eyes continued to stare through him. Something wet hit the fake Kid's cheek. Saguru ground his teeth together. Apparently he was crying.

"You weren't allowed on the case, so you don't know." It said in Kaito's voice.

" **What** don't I know?!" Saguru screamed. "I've read all the  _ bloody  _ case files. What do you know? Are you trying to tell me you're a  _ ghost _ ?"

"Never believed in ghosts," Not-Kaito said, almost laughing. Saguru's vision faded into a bright red hue.

"Ow--Saguru, please, breathe," the voice said, again, using his name. It hurt so much. It  _ hurt _ . "Please breathe and let me talk." He didn't remember letting go of the doppelganger's wrists in favour of gripping him by the shoulders, pressing down. He vaguely recalled the sensation of shaking, slamming what was in his hands into the ground under him. Guilt recoiled through him.  _ Kaito _ \--

"Was there anything about a diamond in the report?"

"No."

"Ah...They probably have it..." The person under him said, eyes sliding closed, pained.

Saguru swallowed, hard. This couldn't be Kaito, it just  _ couldn't  _ be. Kaito was--the memory of what he'd seen when he'd opened that door flooded back a second time. He could feel the sting of the tears coming back again, head starting to spin.

Something under him became bright, returning Saguru's focus back to reality so fast he was sent off-kilter.

Something red was oozing out of Kaito's eyes.

Not blood--it was too bright to be blood. The red glow looked sinister, but nothing really compared to the memory of how blood had seemingly come from Kaito's eyes.

Saguru slid back, off of Kid. Fear clouding everything else away for a moment--what was happening? 

Then Kaito sat up, and Saguru's mind stopped thinking, for just a moment.

The full moon was in view, the city lights from the vantage of fifty stories up in the air, and the red glow had cut out when Kaito sat up, head slightly bowed.

It was dark, red. It was blood, falling from his eyes like tears.

"Kaito--" His voice broke. No...was this...a trick? It couldn't be. God, it couldn't be. The same face was looking at him as it had a month ago, only this time, there was sadness in his eyes.

"They have you, what now?" The ghost in front of Saguru whispered. It was nonsense.

"Kaito?" He said it again, voice pleading. He was asking for something impossible.

Kaito’s focus returned, a hand coming up to wipe at his face, then that face freezing with a look of complete fear. It was only there for half of a second, wiped away with something not unlike resignation.

"I'll have to try not to do that..." Focus taut, Kaito finally looked at him again. "I think I died."

Saguru choked out something that may have sounded halfway like a laugh, but was entirely a sob, head falling forward to Kaito's chest. A hand, bare and dry, stopped him, fingers gently in his hair.

"You shouldn't touch it," Kaito's voice. Kaito's voice.

"What?"

"The blood. It's Pandora."

That sentence didn't make sense for almost a minute, the gears in Saguru's mind slowly grinding back to life. When it finally did, he felt his heart sink.

"You found it...that's what's missing from the reports… You..." The implications...he didn't know what they were, really.

Blue eyes stared into his. 

"I have some of her, now. She isn't happy about what's happening with the rest."


End file.
